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Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib

By Jeralyn, Section War In Iraq
Posted on Fri Mar 11, 2005 at 05:53:01 AM EST
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According to documents obtained by the Washington Post, the CIA and Army secretly agreed to ship some detainees to Abu Ghraiband keep their names off the official lists, holding them as "ghost detainees." The practice of holding "ghost detainees" violates international law.

Army Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, who was second in command of the intelligence gathering effort at Abu Ghraib while the abuse was occurring, told military investigators that "other government agencies" and a secretive elite task force "routinely brought in detainees for a short period of time" and that the detainees were held without an internment number, and their names were kept off the books.

Guards who worked at the prison have said that ghost detainees were regularly locked in isolation cells on Tier 1A and that they were kept from international human rights organizations.

Among those who played a prominent role, according to the Post, was top military intelligence officer Thomas Pappas and Army Lt. Col. Steven Jordan:

An Army major at the prison "suggested an idea of processing them under an assumed name and fingerprinting them," but Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the top military intelligence officer there, "decided against it."

Instead, Jordan's statement said, Pappas "began a formalized written MOU [memo of understanding] procedure" in November 2003, with the CIA and members of Task Force 1-21, "and the memorandum on procedures for dropping ghost detainees was signed."

In his statement to investigators, also obtained by The Post, Pappas said that in September 2003, the CIA requested that the military intelligence officials "continue to make cells available for their detainees and that they not have to go through the normal inprocessing procedures." Pappas also said Jordan was the one who was facilitating the arrangement with the CIA.

The ACLU released similar information yesterday contained in 800 pages of documents.

The latest chapter in the torture and abuse of detainees held in U.S. custody includes a report of a formal agreement between the Army and the CIA to hide "ghost detainees" and an atmosphere of "releaseaphobia" that prevented innocent detainees from being freed.

The ACLU is requesting a special counsel be appointed so that everyone involved in the ghost detainee plan be held accountable.

Background on the "ghost detainees" issue is here, here and here.

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    Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib | 23 comments (23 topical)
    Re: Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib (none / 0) (#1)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Mar 11, 2005 at 02:17:29 AM EST
    'Ghost prisoners' aren't the only category of inmate that U.S. authorities weren't too keen on the world knowing about. And nor, it seems, were they particularly interested in the guilt or innocence of the thousands who found themselves incarcerated after mass arrests at checkpoints, sweeps of villages and city districts et cetera. A form of internment without trial still exists in Iraq today, including the imprisonment of family members, suspected of no offence, who are held in hopes of inducing wanted relatives to give themselves up. In a country where poor intelligence and paid-by-results informers lead to Kafkaesque imprisonment as a consequence of simple greed or the settling of old grudges there is a long way to go before the concept of justice can be said to exist in the prison system. Children said among Abu Ghraib prisoners. WASHINGTON - Children held by the U.S. Army at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison included one boy who appeared to be only about 8 years old, the former commander of the prison told investigators, according to a transcript. "He looked like he was eight years old. He told me he was almost 12," Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski told officials investigating prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. "He told me his brother was there with him, but he really wanted to see his mother, could he please call his mother. He was crying....." .....Karpinski said Maj. Gen. Walter Wodjakowski, then the No. 2 Army general in Iraq, told her in the summer of 2003 not to release more prisoners, even if they were innocent. "I don't care if we're holding 15,000 innocent civilians. We're winning the war," Karpinski said Wodjakowski told her. She said she replied: "Not inside the wire, you're not, sir."

    Re: Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib (none / 0) (#2)
    by soccerdad on Fri Mar 11, 2005 at 04:13:17 AM EST
    There have been reports of ghost detainees and children at AQ going back at least 6 months. They did not receive much play at the time. The story of the children is being reported today in papers all over the country. This raises the question of whether the timing of the release of the most recent investigation of the pentagon by the Pentagon again blaming that pesky bunch of "bad apples" is a conincidence or timed perfectly to shield the admin from these charges of detainment of children. I think the answer is obvious

    Re: Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib (none / 0) (#3)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Mar 11, 2005 at 06:07:59 AM EST
    Police state has arrived. Fascism at its finest. Might makes right. This approach usually produces good results for a while. Our trading partners will pull the rug out from under our feet at some point. It's really not going to be possible to rule the world from a tank that runs on the fuel we are trying to get through the use of the tank. Invest your children. Invest your future. Invest your security. Forget about your principles, the world has changed. It's hard work dismantling a democracy.

    Re: Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib (none / 0) (#4)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Mar 11, 2005 at 06:31:17 AM EST
    International law? We don't need no steenking international law!

    Re: Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib (none / 0) (#5)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Mar 11, 2005 at 06:51:19 AM EST
    DTM-Amsterdam, No one seems to care about the use of banned weapons in Fallujah; I don't know if it's old news to most of the TL crowd, or what. (I'm new here) I was outraged!

    Re: Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib (none / 0) (#6)
    by soccerdad on Fri Mar 11, 2005 at 07:08:18 AM EST
    Canuck, Its old news, but news worth repeating. Fallujah was a war crime.

    Re: Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib (none / 0) (#7)
    by pigwiggle on Fri Mar 11, 2005 at 07:37:34 AM EST
    “ No one seems to care about the use of banned weapons in Fallujah” I think we should be clear about what ‘banned’ means. One caveat, as I’m sure I am about to be accused of supporting the incineration of innocents; I do not condone the use of napalm where non-combatants are at risk of being wounded/killed by such a brutal weapon,. And further, don’t bother trying to convince me the US used mustard gas or any other nerve agents, it will take more than the second hand account of the arab media to convince me of this. That out of the way, to the best of my knowledge the US has refused to ratify the treaty that bans napalm. Can anyone show that the US is breaking a US law? It is otherwise absurd to expect the US to conform to laws or regulations written by another legislature.

    Re: Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib (none / 0) (#8)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Mar 11, 2005 at 08:14:36 AM EST
    Why even refer to it as "Internatuonal Law"? If the U.S. has adopted it, doesn't it make it a violation of U.S. law? Why even allow confusion on this point? JC

    Re: Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib (none / 0) (#9)
    by Andreas on Fri Mar 11, 2005 at 08:21:11 AM EST
    Colonel Thomas M. Pappas from the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade is stationed in Wiesbaden-Erbenheim, Germany. The German government so far has not acted against him but protected him against criminal prosecution.

    Re: Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib (none / 0) (#10)
    by kdog on Fri Mar 11, 2005 at 08:55:22 AM EST
    It's really not going to be possible to rule the world from a tank that runs on the fuel we are trying to get through the use of the tank.
    Excellent, excellent point.

    Re: Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib (none / 0) (#11)
    by Che's Lounge on Fri Mar 11, 2005 at 09:03:47 AM EST
    "We shouldn't be detaining these people. We should be killing them." Gen. Ricardo Snachez

    Re: Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib (none / 0) (#12)
    by Che's Lounge on Fri Mar 11, 2005 at 09:04:42 AM EST
    Sorry, Sanchez

    Re: Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib (none / 0) (#13)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Mar 11, 2005 at 10:03:26 AM EST
    No one seems to care about the use of banned weapons in Fallujah;
    The banned weapons claims I've seen so far have all traced back to one statement of one official quoted in al-Jazeera, with independent confirmation (though its been picked up and repeated by some other sources). There are plenty of war crimes one can attribute to the US conduct in Iraq that are a well supported. I just don't see the basis for granting much credibility to these allegations; I'm not saying they are impossible, just that there is too much fog between me and the events to make any kind of judgement. If it happened, its is an outrage, but there is little reason I see to believe that it did.

    Re: Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib (none / 0) (#14)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Mar 11, 2005 at 11:06:16 AM EST
    Question: Fallujah is leveled - it's infrastructure decimated. It is now virtually uninhabitable. Don't we sound just a bit trite arguing over whether the weapons that accomplished this are "banned" or not? We've committed war crimes and violated just about every human rights convention and treaty in existence. Why wouldn't they use them - but also, who cares if they did? Not "the American people" it seems.

    Re: Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib (none / 0) (#15)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Mar 11, 2005 at 11:12:41 AM EST
    but there is little reason I see to believe that it did.
    will you ignore Gulf War II Syndrome when the returning soldiers start exhibiting symptoms of some disease/ailment that no doctor has ever encountered in their years and years of experience? i'm just suggesting, unfailing trust in the military(or any human institution) is sadly misplaced. there's probably little reason to believe any higher ups knew about or sanctioned torture, btw; send the check for that lakefront property.

    Re: Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib (none / 0) (#16)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Mar 11, 2005 at 02:26:56 PM EST
    "Posted by cmdicely: "I just don't see the basis for granting much credibility to these allegations..." Here's a clue: VIETNAM. Does that ring any bells, or are you too young? The Pentagon Papers heroically exposed the utter lies that the 60s era Pentagon told the US. Bushliar is following the same Vietnam Disaster Strategy, with improvements ala Don Rumsfelds' "ON THE CHEAP" program to destroy the volunteer services. No mission; no exit strategy; no honesty in the deployment; and coverup, coverup, coverup. Powell came back from the slaughtered My Lai, and announced that "relations between the Vietnamese and the US are excellent." That's if you don't count the secret wars against the Cambodians and Laotians, that killed hundreds of thousands (or millions) of non-combatants. Laos had more bombs dropped on it than any other target in human history. The use of napalm and other incendiary bombs was OFF THE SCALE. So, cm, although we supposedly learned from Vietnam, the evidence of coverup is so extensive that refugees from Fallujah saying that the US military was in there after the pogrom with water-cannons washing down the streets is pretty good evidence that civilians are being mass-murdered with WMDs of American manufacture. Or, you could continue to hide your head in Bush's armpit. 'Kill them all' was not an idle threat. Not only are they using proscribed weapons, there is evidence that they trapped people in Fallujah and then EXPERIMENTED on them, as they have bragged about experimenting with their new sound weapon on the Iraqis. Experimenting on civilian populations in an occupation is totally illegal. So is torturing people, especially with no evidence that they are complicit in terrorism (other than being Arab). So is destroying the infrastructure, and so is invading a disarmed country in the first place, in order to put in airbases.

    Re: Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib (none / 0) (#17)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Mar 11, 2005 at 03:10:07 PM EST
    "Posted by Andreas: "Colonel Thomas M. Pappas from the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade is stationed in Wiesbaden-Erbenheim, Germany. The German government so far has not acted against him but protected him against criminal prosecution." That's untrue. The Germans have not protected him in any way. He is as vulnerable to German warcrimes laws as he was a year ago, only a SINGLE German prosecutor said that efforts to try him and his crimes in US courts had not been exhausted. The complaint has since gone to a court body for further appraisal. That panel could still call for the inquest. Meanwhile, in response to the German court, the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights have sued Rumsfeld in US courts. Evidence of even more grave warcrimes is filtering out. The most difficult part of the process is documenting these kinds of crimes, because the witnesses are usually dead, refugees don't carry proof other than their own state of crisis, and gov't spend huge amounts of money covering up their crimes. Even so, truth will win out, and a lot of Centcom is on its way to a well-earned DISGRACE.

    Re: Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib (none / 0) (#18)
    by Andreas on Sat Mar 12, 2005 at 02:15:02 AM EST
    @Paul in LA: It was not a "SINGLE" German prosecutor but the office of the Attorney General Kay Nehm. His function is comparable to that of Alberto Gonzales. It is correct to use all legal means to act against the war criminals but in doing so one should not have any illusions in the German Attorney General - he represents the government. The WSWS has published an article about the decision of the Attorney General and an interview with a representative of the "Republikanischer Anwältinnen- und Anwälteverein (RAV)". So far these are only available in German: Bundesanwaltschaft lehnt Ermittlungen gegen Rumsfeld ab Von Justus Leicht, 12. Februar 2005 "Das Recht darf sich nicht vor der Macht beugen" Ein Interview zur Strafanzeige gegen Donald Rumsfeld und andere Von Justus Leicht, 22. Februar 2005 In 2003 a decision of the German Attorney General - which was in line with the position of the red-green government - enabled the USA to wage the war against Iraq from German territory: The attorney general’s legal fictions Cover-up for German complicity in Iraq war By Alexander Bahar and Armin Fiand, 7 May 2003

    Re: Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib (none / 0) (#19)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Mar 12, 2005 at 07:53:17 AM EST
    these are clear violations of the conventions. Two words: war crimes

    Re: Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib (none / 0) (#20)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Mar 12, 2005 at 11:10:07 AM EST
    DTM Amsterdam, The effects described in AlJazeera's linked page: i.e. "melted bodies". are consistent with the use of new ThermoBaric Ammunition. When used, these weapons flash all the oxigen out of an enclosure, and thus kill instantly. Being new weapons, they are not banned by any conventions what so ever.

    Re: Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib (none / 0) (#21)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Mar 12, 2005 at 02:24:46 PM EST
    US Marines open probe into February 27th 2005 assaults on Iraqi detainees

    Re: Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib (none / 0) (#22)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Mar 12, 2005 at 06:13:13 PM EST
    Thanks, Andreas, for the clarifications, but it is still not the case that the German gov't has extended protections to Pappas, or any others, at least to my knowledge. And it is still the case that the law sends any complaint the GFP refuses to act on to a court board for further review. Monolithic arguments are common on the left, but in fact Germany is not a monolith, any more than the US populations is monolithic. Their legal system struggles in the context of their government, just as ours still does. It is incorrect to assume that the acts of the GFP is completely corrupt. Even Gonzales, were he to have a spark of self, could cause A LOT of trouble for Bushliar and his cronies, if he wanted to save his own soul, in a moment of shattering insight. It's unlikely, but it has happened before. That the Germans let the US stage aircraft from the massive airbases there is not equivalent to supporting the illegal invasion per se. Dirty tree (that's what that means, isn't it?), the use of 'thermobaric ammunition,' aka NAPALM, on civilian populations is a war crime. Law and morality don't necessarily have to meet in advance of a crime. Law is often made as a RESULT of crimes.

    Re: Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib (none / 0) (#23)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sun Mar 13, 2005 at 01:25:59 AM EST
    Don't you mean cooking the peopel at Abu Ghraib-ass? stop Abu Ghraib male rape times; and to the troops specializing in little boy rape, Stop it! "that is an Order." Bush told me to say that.

    Cooking the Books at Abu Ghraib | 23 comments (23 topical)